MIKE NICHOLS, 1931-2014.

When I heard he was dead, I recalled that I'd seen his production of Streamers at Lincoln Center years ago; only later did I notice that he'd also directed the original Broadway production of The Gin Game, which I'd also seen (with E.G. Marshall in for Hume Cronyn, but Jessica Tandy still playing). 10 years ago (!) I made a mean gag about Nichols being "a one-man major entertainment institution for ninety years," because that's really how it seemed; he was always around, even when you didn't notice until someone gave him an award for it.

Those two New York productions were brilliant, but like most of you I know Nichols best from his movies. As Bruce Weber mentioned in the Times today, he was sort of an anti-auteur; you couldn't really pick out obsessions and motifs from his work like you could with Kubrick or Scorsese. He was more like George Cukor, a hard worker who knew that when inspiration failed elbow grease would do. And like Cukor he served the material. He served Edward Albee as well with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf as he did Charles Webb with The Graduate; if the latter is fussier, it's just that Webb's deadpan angst needed more active intervention than Albee's masterpiece.

Maybe some clue to Nichols' true feelings, in lieu of auteur signifiers and whatnot, resides in two of his crazier, more misanthropic efforts: the eco-downer The Day of the Dolphin, and Wolf, a jaundiced (one might say hepatitic) midlife fantasy, redolent of Tom Wolfe but much more fun if no more convincing. If so, it's just as well he turned the generosity of his talent to other authors. For me his sweet spot is Carnal Knowledge -- and I wish there were a YouTube of the scene where Jonathan thinks he's going to date-swap and gets a double whammy instead; it's not as flashy as the available showstopper clips, but it has the advantage of being perfect. But it's also worth remembering that he started out as a comedy sketch artist -- just like Adam Sandler, and how's that for a flattering comparison -- and worth watching those old Nichols and May bits not just for the laughs, which are still there, but also to see him and Elaine May learning on their feet how the game works.